The long awaited for Idaho General Deer season was finally here. On the afternoon of October 9, 2013 prior to opening day, I headed up the highway to my primary hunting spot to hunt The Rolling Stone Buck. This is now the second season I will have been trying to harvest this Buck and I had a good feeling about it this time. I had scouted the area a lot over the past 2 years and had a good grasp on where I would see the Bucks and how to not be detected in the process. The terrain and wind is complicated in this area. The mountains are big and the slope I see the Bucks on is nothing but steep avalanche chutes. The wind this time of year is still variable throughout most of the day with not much consistency. Despite the difficulty’s I had a few strategy’s worked out and another seasons worth of lessons learned to apply to the situation.

I opted to set up camp at the trail head and hike the mile and a half in each morning, so as to minimize the risk of spooking the Deer with my presence in their home range. Even busting a Doe from the bottom of the canyon put’s the Deer on high alert, which pushes the Bucks into the timber where you will never see them. There is a network of trails in this area that the Deer and Elk use exclusively for traveling and escaping. They all keep their eyes and noses on these trails, both to detect incoming danger and to detect fleeing siblings. I still don’t know where the Bucks go when they get spooked off that slope, so this hunt is a one hit wonder for now. I suppose I could push the envelope and foot hunt the timber, but the odds of success are very low when your on the move. All that usually happens is you educate the deer and makes things more difficult for future hunts to that area.

I had a little time in the afternoon after getting camp set up, so I headed up the side of the canyon to glass the hillside I planned to hike up the next morning. This is good practice because if you spook something hiking to your glassing spot, your hunt could be done before it legally starts. When the sun went down I heard a bugle and saw a Raghorn with a small herd of cows and calves feeding on the mountain I wanted to glass from the next morning.  Luckily they were not where I planned on sitting and I could sneak around them such that if I spook them they would go the opposite direction and the Bucks would probably not know. I took pictures and video of the Elk, but never saw any Deer that evening.

I gave myself about 2 hours the next morning to get up, hike in, and get into the first glassing position. This worked out just about right this time. I heard the Raghorn bugle a couple hundred yards behind me at first light as I began to glass for the day and was relieved to know I must have snuck in without being detected. I was on a northerly slope glassing to a southeasterly slope and it was very cold, I had all my layers on to combat the hard freeze but was still getting chilled. I glassed until 11 AM and didn’t see anything that morning. I knew from scouting that those particular Bucks bed by then so I ate a butthole sandwich and headed back to camp for a couple hours to take a nap.

For the 3 PM feeding I glassed a shade pocket on a different part of the slope where I had seen a Buck feeding in the afternoon the prior season. I always seem to see Deer and Elk up and feeding at around 3 PM for 30 or 40 minutes, even on hot days. That time frame has become my most productive evening glassing time in this area as well as others. However nothing was there this evening, not even an Elk.

Opening day came and went. It was pretty slow to say the least, but I know from experience that patience always pays off, especially when your hunting a low density area in October. Or maybe we just tell ourselves that to justify being stubborn. I tentatively decided that evening to give it at least 3 mornings before packing up and giving the area a rest. That’s usually about what it takes in lower density areas. There is only about 3 Bucks in this drainage and I can only effectively glass the one area of their home range so it takes time for them to move through.

The next morning started out the same, then around 8:00 I got to watch a couple Cows and Calves trot up the bottom of the canyon below me. They acted as if they may have been spooked out of the main canyon, but I never saw anyone. I found a little bit better place to glass from that morning, but it was just as cold on that shady north slope as the day before. When the sun gets high enough in the sky to finally hit you, it sure feels good to soak up the heat and thaw out for a while.

Around 11:00 AM I ate and headed back to camp again. This time to change things up instead of napping, I spent the middle of the day prospecting in the creek near camp. I came up empty on that too, but it was a nice change of pace.

I had a great feeling about the third morning. I had not seen any Deer thus far and it was about time for the Bucks to have moved to the part of their home range I was watching. I was a little earlier getting to my spot that morning and it seemed to be even colder. Within the first 5 minutes of glassing I spotted 2 Bucks. Closer inspection showed me it was Sleepy and the small 3 point. Shortly after I spotted them Sleepy bedded out in the open about 8:00 AM, just as he did when I first found him in July. This time they where about a half mile further up the canyon and I could not find The Rolling Stone Buck, he didn’t seem to be with them.

I knew from scouting in July that these Bucks where going to get up and move in 30 or 40 minutes to more cover for the rest of the day. As I watched him chew his cud, the reality that the Rolling Stone Buck was off by himself in the timber started to set in. He was an older age class Deer now and I gave him a lesson last season on that slope. Initially I didn’t want to go after Sleepy, but I caved in. I’m there to hunt and this was an opportunity at a nice 150 class Idaho public land Buck. At the very least I could educate him too and have two big Bucks to chase next season. At about 9:30 ish they got up and headed for some thicker shade. I marked Sleepy using a dead tree I called toothpicks, due to the trunk splitting into 4 smaller trunks about half way up. This was a very recognizable feature. The 3 point bedded a little bit below Sleepy. I made one last scan across the whole slope, and saw something almost straight across from me and up high on the mountain. It turned out to be 2 Elk feeding. I was going to have to sneak by these Elk in order to get to the Buck. I remembered from before how steep the slope was and figured it would take me 4 or 5 hours to go around, sneak by the Elk or at least flush them uphill, and get on the Buck . The hunt was finally on.

I scrambled up the mountain under the mid day sun and as I got close to the top the wind became steady and from a different direction. Out of all 360 directions the wind can come from it will usually change half way through the stalk and end up coming from behind you. I have yet to find a way around this. I was still about a half mile from the Buck and maybe even a little uphill so I stayed optimistic and forged on.

It was close to 3 PM when I finally got to where I could start to see “toothpicks”. I was going extremely slow and the slope was just as steep as last year making it very difficult to keep solid footing. The biggest issue in this type of terrain is the random rocks rolling down the mountain as you step. There is no way to get in range without causing a little bit of an avalanche, but I managed to do pretty good with careful footing this time. I was able to verify “toothpicks” with a picture I had taken through my spotting scope and positioned myself the best I could before cresting the next high spot. I knew I was close and I scanned with my binoculars constantly. The mountain looked way different now that I was on it and I didn’t know exactly where the Buck was bedded. I wanted to search around for his tracks but this would just cause a lot of racket and movement. When I got to where I could see pretty good over the high spot I was able to see the tree clump that I thought the Buck bedded in. I didn’t see the Buck though. I slowly proceeded scanning the rest of the slope with my binoculars until I got within 50 yards of the tree clump and still nothing. When I finally got to the tree clump there was in fact a deer bed in it, but I really could not tell if the Buck had bedded there that morning. It was for sure not being heavily used. There was a large deep canyon just beyond the tree clump and it is entirely possible that the Buck continued into the canyon to bed somewhere else. I could not see into this canyon from where I was glassing that morning and in hindsight it would have been smarter to move up the ridge when I first spotted the Bucks so as to get more straight across from them and watch them bed more precisely. I was not terribly disappointed, It was still a challenging and fun stalk. In fact in a way I am kind of glad I was unsuccessful, because now next year there will be two even bigger Bucks to hunt!

On September 14th 2013 I headed out for the first hunt of the season. This was the General Season early rifle hunt in one of the Frank Church Wilderness units. My scouting trip into this area a few weeks earlier yielded very little results. It took 3 days to find a Buck and Elk sign was nonexistent. Based on this scouting trip, I opted to not buy an Elk tag for this area and decided to focus on Deer and Wolf for the hunt. I intended on going back to hunt the Buck called Frank but plan A was quickly foiled by road conditions. Although my truck is capable enough to have crossed this, I decided to play it safe due to the pending rain in the forecast. It could easily wash out to a point that wouldn’t allow me to get back while I was on the hunt and then I’d be screwed!

This is a great example of the importance of plan B and sometimes plan C. I had only physically been into the area that was on the other side of this washout, but I had scouted other areas on the map. When I see Deer off the road on the way in to an area I plan to scout, I take note and study the map of that area as an alternative for next time. For this occasion I had actually seen a decent Buck cross the road in another area, so I had no hesitation in where to go next (plan B).

He wasn’t a very big Buck, but he had character and I’m more than happy with that. I will call him the Tripod Buck, for the tripod of points he had on one side and I knew he would be near where I had seen him cross the road because that was part of his home range. I reviewed my map and picked out a location that would give me a good vantage point, especially a good view of the ridge I had seen him head for 2 weeks or so earlier, and started hiking.

It was a slippery initial hike due to the steep loose ground and I had to cross a rock slide again. Crossing these rock slides is starting to equate to seeing Deer on the trip.

When I made it to the top of the ridge I started looking for a flat enough spot to make camp. This was difficult and I ended up having to hike a little farther along the ridge than I really wanted to, but I found a great little bowl that had some flat ground, protection from the wind, and a view.

I found a relatively flat area that wasn’t in the path of any widowmakers and set up my BCS2. It was mid afternoon by now and so I took a rest once I got situated. I really like the convenience of the dual doors on the BCS2.

After an enjoyable rest I headed up the ridge above camp to find a glassing location. Despite the vantage point I was on, I wanted to look over the basin and ridge where the Buck had headed to first. In the last ten minutes of light I spotted 2 Deer heading up hill about half a mile directly across the basin from me. I watched them through the spotting scope as long as I could before it just got to dark to see. I could tell they where Bucks, but couldn’t get a good look at them. The lingering glare from the sun combined with the distance was just a little more than my spotting scope could handle. Despite the darkness, when they skylined themselves on the ridge I was able to briefly get a look at the antlers. One was a forky or small 3 point and the other was the Tripod Buck I had seen crossing the road while scouting. I could make out that he was about 24″ wide and looked like a 3 point on one side with some small stickers on his tines and main beam. On the other side he was a 4 point with his rear forks being a crabby tripod, technically a five point I guess. These Bucks were on the move and combined with the glare, I couldn’t get any pictures, but he had great character and the hunt was on for tomorrow when the season opened.

The next morning I got up on the peak just above camp and glassed a new basin and the slope that held the Bucks the night before. I had hoped that they would come back and bed in the same spot for the day, but it was beginning to look like that wasn’t going to happen. After the first hour and a half of the day I had not seen anything in the basin nor the slope, so I moved off the peak and along the ridge that split the two basins I was interested in to the next glassing spot. There where Buck and a few Bull tracks all along this ridge of varying ages. I was defiantly in an area they use. By the end of the morning I had made it to the last peak on the ridge and had a good view of the slope and ridge that the Bucks where on the night before. I still hadn’t seen anything by about 10:30 AM and I knew that they where probably bedded down by now wherever they where. I could now see that there where some pretty good timber patches in the direction they had headed the night before on the backside of the slope that would be a great place to “hole up” for the season. From the ridge I was on I could hear the ATV’s going up and down the road and I know the Bucks could too. It makes sense that they would move over the hill to a more secluded part of their range. Perhaps that was exactly what they where doing last night when everyone was showing up and also why they didn’t feed much as they went over the hill.

I didn’t want to get any closer to the area, so after my morning glassing sessionI headed down into the basin behind me to get water. There was a lake that looked fairly close, but it ended up being about a 600 foot decent and about a mile away.

I stocked up on water, ate, and loafed around for a while. It would be a good place to camp, but then my scent would be carried by the thermals up to some of the ridges around the basin, and I would have to climb 6 or 7 hundred feet every morning to glass new area. This isn’t always real efficient and will tire you out quickly. There where a lot of fairly fresh Elk sign in the meadows adjacent to the lake and I had kind of wished I had got an Elk tag. They where in the area, but it would be one of the toughest pack outs there is especially for the smaller antlered Elk that the area is known for.

I made it back up on the ridge by about 3:00 PM and began glassing from the peak just above where I had seen the Bucks. A lot of times in Idaho I have seen Bucks get up around 3 to feed around and change beds. Even if they are still in the shade, they seem to like to change the direction they are facing due to the shifting breezes throughout the day. They tend to face downwind so they can see and hear in the direction that they can’t smell.

I had a great view of the area they where in the day before but still didn’t see anything, it was starting to get discouraging. I headed back along the ridge towards camp, with the plan now to be glassing from where I was yesterday and at the same time. I glassed thoroughly after the sun went down until I couldn’t see anymore with no results once again.

It rained a little that night and it made my shelter quite a bit heavier when I packed it up. Today was the last day of the hunt and since this Buck was not a monster, I decided to get aggressive and still hunt through the area he was in and then head back down the mountain. I glassed until about 10 AM from the usual spots with the usual results and then moved in to where they crossed the saddle 2 days prior. I wanted to find their tracks and then track them if possible. I did find a lightly rained on Buck track, but the ground in that area wasn’t very conducive to tracks like the other areas. So I just went ahead and still hunted the thicker timbered areas within a square mile in the traditional fashion for the bulk of the day with no results. This also gives me a good understanding of how the terrain really is rather than what it looks like from half a mile away. Next time I hunt this area I will have an advantage when it comes time to make a stalk.

I usually don’t expect much when hunting areas that I haven’t scouted, but this trip turned out to be another good one. I saw Bucks and learned a new area! I am looking forward to watching this Buck for the next few years, and in hindsight kind of glad I didn’t get him If he survives, he might turn out to be a really spectacular nontypical.